In nowadays information society, most electronics information products such as computers, cellular phones or personal digital assistants (PDAs) usually come with a keyboard to be used as data input device for inputting commands or information. Accordingly, a keyboard that is not function normally is going to affect the correctness of electric signals being inputted into the electronics information product corresponding thereto and thus may cause abnormality to the electronics information product. Therefore, it is an important quality control item for performing an inspection procedure upon keyboards for determining whether or not all the keys on the keyboard are function normally.
Most keyboard inspection procedures used in the industry are performed either manually by man-power or automatically by machine. The manual inspection requires the hiring of a great amount of labors just for pressing each and every keys in keyboards to be tested by hand, that not only can achieve a very low inspection efficiency at a very high labor cost, but also erroneous inspection result may be caused since it can not ensure different keys to be pressed by the same pressing force and also it can not ensure the pressing force to be distributed evenly on the key when it is pressed. In addition, as different pressing forces should be used for testing different types of keyboards such as the thin-film capacitor type keyboard, such variation in pressing forces according to the type of keyboard to be tested as well as the variation in the duration of the pressing are all going to enhance the chance of erroneous judgment and thus raise the difficulty in quality control.
On the other hand, the automatic inspection apparatus as the one disclosed in TW. Pat. No. 519244, is powered by a pneumatic mean for exerting the pressing force upon each and every key on a tested keyboard as well as for indication lighting test. Such automatic inspection apparatus comprises: a integrated device including a pair of holding parts and at least an orientation part, used for holding a keyboard at a specific position for testing; a mode inspection module including a pressing inspection unit, a knob rotating unit and a lighting inspection unit, being disposed at positions corresponding to the keys and lightings on the tested keyboard; wherein the pressing inspection unit is configured with a retractable element in a manner that retractable element is connected to a pneumatic source so as to use the air ejected from the same for forcing the retractable element to extend and thus press upon a key of the keyboard. It is noted that the aforesaid pressing inspection unit can be brought to move by a displacement mechanism so that the pressing inspection unit can be moved to different positions for enabling the same to press upon each and every keys of the keyboard successively. Moreover, the result of each pressing of the pressing inspection unit, i.e. a pressing signal, is sent to an evaluation device via a signal linkage device for analysis and evaluation.